Drivers

Some Highways Still Closed From Hurricane Damage

September 27, 1999
• by Staff

Although most Interstate highways are open, North Carolina, Virginia and other states hit hard by Hurricane Floyd still report some road and bridge closings due to floods and hurricane damage - and more rain this week isn't helping.

"Eastern North Carolina is still a mess," reports Bennie Foy, a trucker who lives in the western part of the state. "Lots of roads closed, if only for short stretches. Highway 17 was down from four to two lanes just south of Washington, NC, because the river was covering the two southbound lanes."Sections of more than 400 North Carolina roads were still closed yesterday due to flooding. The North Carolina Department of Transportation is resuming its regular working hours beginning today, from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. For information about road closures in the state, call 1-877-DOT-4-YOU, or visit the NCDOT's web site at http://www.dot.state.nc.us.In Virginia, the state DOT warns that I-95, while open, is prone to heavy delays and recommends I-85 as an alternate route. For Virginia road closure information, go to http://www.vdot.state.va.us. During the storm's peak, more than 300 roads in Virginia were closed, and the DOT estimates it will cost at least $40 million in road repairs.Some road repairs can be done fairly quickly, such as replacing washed-out pavement. More extensive work, such as rebuilding roads where there are sinkholes, will take several weeks, and bridges will take even longer.

KeepTruckin is fast-growing company that specializes in providing electronic logging and fleet management solutions for owner-operators and small carriers. It recently announced a new round of capital to fund its expansion. We spoke to KeepTruckin Co-founder and CEO Shoaib Makani about where they came from and where they're going.

A quarterly survey of a varied panel of trucking fleets finds continued strong plans to buy more trucks, especially among larger fleets, and among private fleets looking to address capacity and rate issues – but those truck orders are in many cases about other things than adding capacity, because drivers continue to be in short supply.